290 Recent Progress and present State of Systematic Botany 
it was considered as sacrilegious to doubt. We were taught, 
and some may still believe, that every species, such as we now 
see it, was an original creation, perpetuated through every gen- 
eration within fixed limits which never have been and never 
will be transgressed. We were less authoritatively told that 
resemblances of different species were owing to their having 
been formed upon one plan variously modified. To the ques- 
tion why they were so modified, the ready answer was, such 
was the will of the Creator; and in order not to suppose that 
that will was influenced by mere caprice, it was suggested that 
e modifications were either to suit the plant to the circum- 
stances it was placed in, or to remedy defects in the original 
plan, or we were simply told that the subject was beyond our 
powers of comprehension.* 
“ One consequence of this apparent impossibility of proceed- 
ing further in the investigation of the causes of affinities and 
of this necessity of taking species as separate creations in enor- 
mous numbers, with resemblances and differences in endless 
variety according to the inscrutable will of the Creator, was 
the encouragement it gave to arbitrary classifications and in- 
was, indeed, generally admitted that plants should be arranged 
in genera, orders, &., in groups of h 
tinguished the species from the variety. tanist who 
affirmed that Rubus fruticosus, Draba verna, or Sphagnum palus- 
tre wer one very variable species, and he who main 
* “In my frequent intercourse during the above period with foreign botanists, 
I heard more than one German Professor affirm that a type-form was created for 
each natural order (the common clover, for instance, being that for Papilionace®), 
that Na set to work to modify thi orm i ing species of a 
e, till, tired of the exertion, she next produced new speci 
been created without a simultaneous creation of plants for him to cultivate for 
food, quite independent of the wild vegetation which existed before him for the 
food of animals. <A ill wi to 
